Deus ex Machina
Alchemists, masters of magick and of pleasure --
The great terror from the sky is the colossal force of the Assassins.
They have returned and they chant 'Allah Haqq. Haqq Allah.'
Now the crusaders will march, they will stream toward Alamut.
In the National Cathedral the vice president with bearing of gravitas proclaims
Delenda est, and Dubya hears the ancestral voice of Prescott prophesying anthrax.
A hashish or opium dream, an opus of pure violence, a spectacle
like a battle staged in the Colosseum with real victims, or an inaugural sacrifice
in Tenochtitlan – in less than two hours it is finished. The invisible perpetrator
has commandeered eternal omnipresent speed.
Four million people in the street -- policemen on horseback, cloches and boaters,
ticker-tape falling like a shower of snow -- lucky Lindbergh waves to the crowd.
What began in Crete three thousand years ago -- a dream of wax and feathers
(a cover story) -- touching down in Dayton, leads to an ice-flecked beach
where Orville released the restraining wire, and the machine took off
into the December wind. Some say the place-name signifies a dragonfly.
Do you know the hawk's name that flew today?
Somewhere over the horizon, where bombs fly, (bombs fly over the horizon)
fresh blood stains the thin sheet covering the bodies of two little boys,
two brothers, faces pale and yellow in death, on a bare mattress
on the floor in a house in Kabul. Red poppies
dance in the breeze in Khurasan.
written in October 2001
cf. The Journal of 9/11 Research and 9/11 Issues -- Yes, there are issues with 9/11!!!
Notes, references and sources for these lines:
line 1: 'masters of magick and of pleasure'
"By night Hassan-i Sabbah like a civilized wolf in a turban stretches out on a parapet above the garden & glares at the sky, conning the asterisms of heresy in the mindless cool desert air. True, in this myth some aspirant disciples may be ordered to fling themselves off the ramparts into the black--but also true that some of them will learn to fly like sorcerers.
"The emblem of Alamut holds in the mind, a mandal or magic circle lost to history but embedded or imprinted in consciousness. The Old Man flits like a ghost into tents of kings & bedrooms of theologians, past all locks & guards with forgotten moslem/ninja techniques, leaves behind bad dreams, stilettos on pillows, puissant bribes."
"The attar of his propaganda seeps into the criminal dreams of ontological anarchism, the heraldry of our obsessions displays the luminous black outlaw banners of the Assassins...all of them pretenders to the throne of an Imaginal Egypt, an occult space/light continuum consumed by still-unimagined liberties." --
Hakim Bey, Temporary Autonomous Zones http://www.totse.com/en/ego/science_fiction/taz.html
line 2: 'The great terror from the sky'
"L’an mil neuf cens nonante neuf sept mois,
Du ciel viendra un grand Roy d’effrayeur:
Resusciter le grand Roy d’Angolmois,
Auant apres Mars regner par bon-heur."
-- Nostradamus X, 0972
In the year 1999 seventh month,
from the sky will come a great King of terror:
To revive the great King of the Angolmois,
Before after Mars reigns happily.
The date is wrong by a decrement of 2. From 9/11 we can obtain 9 + 1 + 1 = 11, 1 + 1 = 2. 1999 + 2 = 2001, 7 + 2 = 9, which gives us September 2001.
http://cercle.nostra.online.fr/c0901_x.htm
line 2 'the Assassins'
"Now no man was allowed to enter the Garden save those whom he intended to be his ASHISHIN. There was a fortress at the entrance to the Garden, strong enough to resist all the world, and there was no other way to get in. He kept at his Court a number of the youths of the country, from twelve to twenty years of age, such as had a taste for soldiering... Then he would introduce them into his Garden, some four, or six, or ten at a time, having first made them drink a certain potion which cast them into a deep sleep, and then causing them to be lifted and carried in. So when they awoke they found themselves in the Garden.
"When therefore they awoke, and found themselves in a place so charming, they deemed that it was Paradise in very truth. And the ladies and damsels dallied with them to their hearts' content...
"So when the Old Man would have any prince slain, he would say to such a youth: 'Go thou and slay So and So; and when thou returnest my Angels shall bear thee into Paradise. And shouldst thou die, natheless even so will I send my Angels to carry thee back into Paradise.'"
(from The Book of Ser Marco Polo, the Venetian, translated by Henry Yule, London, 1875.)
http://nepenthes.lycaeum.org/Ludlow/Texts/assassin.html
line 2 'Allah Haqq. Haqq Allah.'
"The refrain means: GOD IS TRUTH, TRUTH IS GOD and can be sung as such."
http://www.xs4all.nl/~sufilab/dedication1text.html
line 4: 'the crusaders':
"On whom, therefore, is the labor of avenging these wrongs and of recovering this territory incumbent, if not upon you, you upon whom, above all other nations, God has conferred remarkable glory in arms, great courage, bodily activity, and strength to humble the heads of those who resist you ?"
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/urban2a.html
line 4: 'Alamut'
"... in 1090 [al-Hasan ibn-al-Sabbah] ...gained possession of the strong mountain fortress Alamut, ...this "eagle's nest," as the name probably means, gave ibn-al-Sabbah and his successors a central stronghold of primary importance. Its possession was the first historical fact in the life of [the Assassins]."
http://nepenthes.lycaeum.org/Ludlow/Texts/assassin.html
line 6: 'Delenda est'
delenda est Carthago: Carthage must be utterly destroyed. (A phrase with which Cato the elder urged the Roman people to the destruction of Carthage ... )"
http://www.sacklunch.net/Latin/D/delendaestCarthago.html
line 6: 'the ancestral voice of Prescott'
"George Herbert Walker Bush was born on June 12, 1924, in Milton, Massachusetts, to Dorothy Walker Bush and Prescott Bush (R-Senator, CT, 1952-62)."
http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/biographies/president/bio.html
line 6: 'Dubya hears the ancestral voice ...'
"And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war!"
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge/poems/Kubla_Khan.html
line 7: 'A hashish or opium dream ...'
"... Coleridge took "two grains of Opium" before he wrote Kubla Khan; and this fact naturally raises the issue of the drug's effect on the poet's creative imagination."
http://www.eiu.edu/~multilit/studyabroad/lyricalballads/comp3c.htm
Xanadu & Alamut in 'The Search for Mount Abora'
http://killdevilhill.com/romanticschat/messages2/456.html
line 8: 'a battle staged ...'
"Those who fought in staged battles in the arena were called in Latin campiones ..."
http://www.quinion.com/words/topicalwords/tw-cam2.htm
lines 8-9: 'an inaugural sacrifice in Tenochtitlan'
"In the 15th century the Aztecs formed the Triple Alliance with the states of Texcoco and Tlacopan. The joint armies were sent east to wage war against Tlaxcala and Huejotzingo. When the victorious warriors returned to Tenochtitlan in 1487 they brought 20,000 captives to be sacrificed for the dedication of the Great Temple built to honor both Huizilopochtli and Tlaloc."
http://www.mexconnect.com/mex_/hpostclassic2.html
line 10: 'eternal omnipresent speed'
"We stand on the far promontory of centuries!... What is the use of looking behind us, since our task is to smash the mysterious portals of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We live already in the absolute, since we have already created the eternal omnipresent speed." -- Filippo Tomasso Marinetti, Manifesto of Futurism, 1909
http://dept.english.upenn.edu/~jenglish/English104/marinetti.html
line 11: "Four million people in the street'
"An estimated three to four million people turned out for the pageant to mark Lindbergh's triumphant return." http://www.getty.edu/art/collections/objects/o51905.html
line 12: 'Ticker-tape falling like a shower of snow'
"... New York June 13, 1927. The city showered confetti and ticker tape on Lindbergh as he made his triumphal journey up Broadway." http://www.detnews.com/history/lindy/lindy1.htm
line 13: 'What began in Crete three thousand years ago ...'
"Each of us is all the sums he has not counted: subtract us into nakedness and night again, and you shall see begin in Crete four thousand years ago the love that ended yesterday in Texas.
"The seed of our destruction will blossom in the desert, the alexin of our cure grows by a mountain rock, and our lives are haunted by a Georgia slattern, because a London cutpurse went unhung. Each moment is the fruit of forty thousand years. The minute-winning days, like flies, buzz home to death, and every moment is a window on all time." -- Thomas Wolfe http://godot_.tripod.com/pages/benlynn.html
line 13: 'a dream of wax and feathers'
"Daedalus and Icarus were an Athenian craftsman and his son. They were exiled in Crete after Daedalus murdered his apprentice whose skill was greater than his master's. When the father and son were imprisoned by the king of Crete, the inventor made wings from feathers and wax so that he and his son could escape by flying away. Despite his father's warnings, Icarus flew too close the sun. The wax in his wings melted and he perished while his father flew to safety."
http://www.entrenet.com/~groedmed/greekm/mythdaed.html
'touching down in Dayton'
"In 1893, the brothers opened the Wright Cycle Co. in Dayton [Ohio], building and repairing bicycles for residents."
http://www.citybeat.com/2001-04-12/scitech.shtml
line 14: 'Orville released the restraining wire'
"He released the restraining wire and the machine started down the 60-foot track, traveling slowly into the headwind at about 7 or 8 miles an hour--so slow that Wilbur was able to run alongside holding the right wing to balance the machine on the track. After a run of 40 feet on the track, the machine took off."
http://statelibrary.dcr.state.nc.us/nc/ncsites/wright4.htm
line 16: 'a dragonfly'
"Others say that the local term for the ever-present dragonflies -- 'skeeter hawk' -- was further twisted by the island brogue to sound like 'kitty hawk'." http://www.kitty-hawk.com/genlfact.htm
line 18: 'Somewhere over the horizon'
"One day I'll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far behind me
Where troubles melt like lemondrops
Way above the chimney tops
That's where you'll find me"
http://www.amandashome.com/wizardoz.html
line 22: 'Khurasan'
"Afghanistan [was named] ... Khurasan in the medieval era ..."
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atrium/5150/facts.html
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